Our Principal Loss Was in This Place: Action at the Slaughter Pen and the South End of Houck's Ridge

Georg, Kathleen

Devil's Den. The Round Tops. Slaughter Pen. Few words evoke instant recognition of the fighting at Gettysburg in 1863 as these do. Perhaps only the Angle and the Wheatfield rival them for instant association to the battle and the battlefield. The proximity of the four former sites to each other influenced the flow and events of the battle on 2 July 1863, and neither can necessarily be treated by narrative or physical development without considering the relationships and impacts to the integral parts. At various times the renown of each of the four sites has ebbed or magnified. The Round Tops and Slaughter Pen were photographed by those early chroniclers of the battlefield before the month of July 1863 dissipated---O'Sullivan, Gibson, Gardner, and Brady. Devil's Den was not. Hhile Little Round Top retained its prominence because of the very nature of its visibly tactical importance, the Slaughter Pen slippedinto virtual obscurity, aided by annual growth of foliage which concluded it: as little more than part of Big Round Top's natural environment. The group of boulders at Devil' s Den, on the other hand, ~las and has been ass i gned more significance than its battle relationship accorded it, and has become a premiere battlefield stop because of its geological attractions and stories of swarms of sharpshooters. Who could resist walking and clambering about the maze of immense boulders on a summer afternoon; who could not appreciate those legends of venerable American ancestors, plying their frontier trade with the squirrel ri fl es?